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Social Contagion: Living with a Person at Risk of Depression May Increase Your Risk As Wellurn:syndication:0d500864872eb0c240d171190b64cec1https://www.choosehelp.com/blogs/emotional-health/social-contagion-living-with-a-person-at-risk-of-developing-depression-may-increase-your-depression-risk-as-well

At certain periods in life, living with a person who uses maladaptive thinking styles increases your risk of depression. Fortunately, the opposite is also true.

Trying to avoid depression? Well be careful who you live
with…

Certain thinking styles increase your risk for depression. For example, people
who blame themselves for negative and stressful events beyond their control and those who imagine
they have little control over their fate are at greater risk of depression than
people with more adaptive thinking styles.

At certain periods of life, such as when we first attend
university, we are strongly influenced by our peers and research shows that we
even tend to adopt some of the thinking styles of those around us.

So if you get close to a person who makes use of thinking
strategies that increase the risk of depression, you are more likely to also
experience an increased depression risk.

The Study

Once past adolescence, most people don’t change their thinking strategies much – you’re just either a glass half-empty kind of person, or you’re
not.

But in times of major transition, such as when moving away
from home for the first time to a university dorm room, do such thinking
styles then become contagious?

That’s what researchers at the University of Notre Dame
wanted to know, and to find out they enlisted 103 pairs of randomly assigned college roommates to participate in a study.

Each student was given a questionnaire to fill out within a
month of arriving on campus and then two more, at 3 and 6 months later.

The questionnaires measured for cognitive vulnerability to
depression and indices of depression

The Results

Students who got randomly assigned a roommate with maladaptive
thinking styles (someone who was at risk of developing depression) were likely to
‘catch’ some of this negative thinking, and you could see this increase
in cognitive vulnerability at both 3 and 6 months.

Conversely, students with higher vulnerability scores
assigned to live with students exhibiting very little negative thinking
actually reduced their risk of depression by 3 and 6 months of co-habitation

Students who ‘caught’ negative thinking patterns by 3 months exhibited twice the level of depressive symptoms by 6 months as students who
had not increased their negative thinking patterns.

Discussion

The study authors write, "Our findings suggest that it
may be possible to use an individual's social environment as part of the
intervention process, either as a supplement to existing cognitive
interventions or possibly as a stand-alone intervention. Surrounding a person
with others who exhibit an adaptive cognitive style should help to facilitate
cognitive change in therapy."

Though it’s still in the experimental stage, an app like
this has enormous potential to serve as an early warning mechanism for people
prone to depression and other mental illnesses.

How Does It Work?

The research team had 48 Dartmouth students test the app
over a ten week course period. The app tracked and analyzed a wealth of data,
most of it collected without any user interaction, by tapping into each phone’s
microphone, accelerometer, light sensor and location sensors. For example:

Your sleeping schedule – time to bed, sleep duration and
wake up schedule.

Applications

Though for the pilot study the app provided no user
feedback, apps like this could provide individual and macro-level feedback.

At the individual level, a wellness tracking app could
respond to worrisome data indicators with prompts warning about excessive
partying, poor sleep habits, a need for more socializing, better eating habits
or a need to make an appointment with a mental health professional.

At the macro level, such as on a college campus, aggregate
data could help health professionals identify periods of excessive stress and
implement measures to improve overall well-being.

Although there are many potential uses for this type of
data, the researchers acknowledge that privacy issues are a concern.

Want to be happier (and avoid relapse?) Well, leave the car at home and walk, cycle or bus to work. Researchers say active commuting leads to substantial psychological health gains.

Is your daily commute affecting your health and happiness?

Well, according to English researchers, if you drive a car
to work each day, it probably is.

Moving beyond the obvious physical health benefits of more active
modes of transportation, public health researchers at East Anglia University in
the U.K. sifted through 18 years of data on nearly 18 000 people to see how
driving in a car to work each day affected mental health and overall wellness. Measures
of psychological wellness included: ability to sleep at night, problem solving
ability, feelings of self-worth and overall happiness.

The Findings

They found that:

Having a longer drive to work worsened physiological
health, however, having a longer walk or cycle to work improved
psychological health.

People who switched from driving to work to walking or
cycling reported increased happiness.

Surprisingly, people who rode public transportation to work
also reported better psychological health than car drivers. The benefits of
public transit were not as substantial as the benefits seen with active commuting.

The Commentary

Summing up their findings, the researchers suggest that at
the macro level, persuading even a fraction of commuters to switch to active commuting
could result in substantial national mental health gains.

And in the journal Preventative Medicine, they also offer some individual advice, writing, “car driving (a non-passive travel mode that
requires constant concentration) can give rise to boredom, social isolation,
and stress…avoiding car driving may be beneficial to well-being.”

Researchers say that not only do random acts of kindness make us feel happier; they can also reduce the severity of social anxiety disorder symptoms.

Researchers at UBC say simple acts of kindness produce big
happiness rewards and seem to alleviate some of the distress associated with
conditions like social anxiety disorder.

The Study

A pool of socially anxious study subjects were split into
three groups

Researchers instructed subjects from the first group to
engage in multiple small acts of kindness, like buying someone a small gift or
cup of coffee or offering a co-worker a ride, two days per week for four weeks

Subjects in the second group received belief challenging
(CBT) instruction and exercises, two days per week, for four weeks

A third group received no therapy or instructions to engage
in random acts of kindness

The Results

Subjects in the acts of kindness group experienced increased
levels of positive mood that lasted over the entire four weeks of the study
period. Subjects in the other two groups experienced no equivalent increase in
positive mood.

Only subjects in the acts of kindness group also reported
decreased social avoidance and increased relationship satisfaction

Mindfulness, a technique out of Buddhist meditation that helps people stay focused on the present moment, works as well as anti depressant medications in helping people with depression avoid relapse.

For 18 months, Canadian researcher, Zindel V. Segal of the
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health followed 84 adult patients who, at the start
of the study, had gotten depression under control with medication.

The study subjects were divided into 3 groups:

1
group continued to take anti depressant medications to prevent relapse

1
group was given a placebo medication

1
group was given no medication, but was instead trained in mindfulness and
meditation exercises, and instructed to meditate daily for 40 minutes

The Results

After 18 months:

60%
of the patients given a placebo had relapsed back to depression

46%
of the patients taking an anti depressant had relapsed

38%
of the patients trained in mindfulness had relapsed

Although maintenance therapy with an anti depressant
medication is effective (see the 54% success rate above) research shows that as
many as 40% of patients prescribed a maintenance course of anti depressants to
ward off remission fail to take their medications; because of this, the study
authors note, “For those unwilling or unable to tolerate maintenance
antidepressant treatment, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy offers equal
protection from relapse during an 18-month period.”

Why Does It Work?

Segal says that mindfulness exercises and mediation help
people with depression become more attuned to triggers that can lead to
depressive feelings. Segal explains, saying, "If you had depression
triggers, you might turn your attention instead to the fact that you enjoy
eating your food, and that you walk outside and it's a bright sunny day."

Segal admits that for some people, finding 40 minutes a day
for meditation and mindfulness exercises can be challenging, but she says the
dividends of the time expenditure more than make up for any difficulties,
adding that, “It’s kind of like going like going to the gym and working a
muscle, except in this case you’re not working a muscle in your body, you’re
working the muscles in your brain that help you understand and control your
emotions.”

Segal is looking into expanding access to mindfulness exercises
for people with depression, and may develop an online mindfulness program.

The full results of the study have been published in the Archives
of General Psychology.

For people already predisposed to mental illness (people with mental illness in the immediate family, for example) experiencing stress during adolescence likely increases the risk of experiencing mental illness as an adult.

Could teen angst cause adult schizophrenia, major depression
and other serious mental illnesses?

Well if people are anything like mice (and apparently we
are) for people already predisposed to mental illness, experiencing stress
while a teen greatly increases the odds of developing full-blown mental illness
as an adult.

The Experiment

John Hopkins Medical School researchers started off with a
group of mice that had a genetic predisposition to serious mental illness.

Half of the mice served as a control group, and were raised
through adolescence as normal

The other half served as the experimental group. During
adolescence, these mice were placed in isolation for 3 weeks (Inducing stress)

The Results

The mice that were stressed during adolescence were far more
likely to exhibit symptoms of mental illness in adulthood than the mice that
were raised as normal to adulthood.

When the researchers examined the brains of the experimental
mice they found that mice exposed to stress during adolescence had higher
levels of the stress hormone cortisol and lower levels of the neurotransmitter
dopamine in areas of the brain related to higher order brain function, like emotional
regulation and thinking.

To see if it was cortisol that was causing the reduction in
dopamine, the researchers then chemically blocked cortisol transmission. This caused
dopamine levels to normalize.

The Significance

Commenting on the significance of the research, the study
authors point out that:

Gaining an understanding of the biological causes of
elevated cortisol levels in the brain may help in the development of
medications to control stress hormone levels and treat certain mental illnesses.

To prevent mental illness, we need to do a better job of
protecting people already predisposed to mental illness from stress during adolescence,
for example, by protecting children growing up in families with mental illness
from experiencing neglect.

In a study which shows an association, but no causality – researchers find that people who drink 4 or more cans of diet soda per day are 31% more likely to get depression than people who do not drink sweetened beverages.

More coffee drinking, by the way, seems to slightly
lower a person’s risk of depression.

The Study

NIH researchers polled more than 250 000, 50 to 71 year old
study subjects about their drinking habits during 1995 and 1996.

10 years later, researchers followed up with all subjects to
find out how many had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000.

The Results

11 311 of the 263 925 subjects had been diagnosed with
depression

Compared to people who did not regularly drink sweetened
drinks:

People who drank 4 or more cans of diet soda per day were
31% more likely to have been diagnosed with depression (People who drank 4 or
more cans of regular soda were 22% more likely)

People who drank 4 or more cans of diet fruit drinks per day
were 51% more likely to have been diagnosed with depression

People who drank 4 or more cups of coffee per day were 10%
less likely than non coffee drinkers to have been diagnosed with depression.

The Commentary

The researchers state, "Our research suggests that cutting
out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened
coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk More research is needed to
confirm these findings, and people with depression should continue to take
depression medications prescribed by their doctors."

They also stress that that although results show an
association between sweetened drinks and an increased incidence rate of
depression – there is no way of knowing from this study whether consumption of
sweetened drinks causes an increased depression risk.

As an alternate theory, some experts have suggested that
depression may lead to increased cravings for sweetened foods and drink s and
this is a more plausible explanation for the association than suggestions that
sweetened drinks might cause depression in some way.

]]>John LeeDietsDiet SodasDepressionWed, 09 Jan 2013 01:07:40 -0500Research: To Purge Negative Thoughts, Just Write Them Down and Throw Them in the Trashurn:syndication:c05a503ec6f203b694e1b8f8bf5ebf5ehttps://www.choosehelp.com/blogs/emotional-health/research-to-purge-negative-thoughts-just-write-them-down-and-throw-them-in-the-trash

Unwanted negative thoughts – researchers say you can eliminate their power by writing them down on paper and then throwing that paper in a trash can.

It sounds a bit silly – almost too simplistic – but according
to Ohio State University researchers, it really works…

To eliminate bothersome negative thoughts, all you have to
do is write them down on a piece of paper, and then crumple that paper up and
throw it in the nearest trash can.

When people write down and then physically throw out
unwanted thoughts these thoughts are much less likely to influence future judgments.
Conversely, when people write out a thought and keep it safe – in a wallet for
example – the thought takes on greater importance and has much greater
influence over future judgments.

The Study

Researchers asked 283 study subjects to write down either
positive or negative thoughts about the Mediterranean diet.

After writing thoughts on paper:

Some subjects were instructed to throw the paper out in a
trash can

Some subjects were instructed to file the paper away at
their desk

Some subjects were instructed to fold the paper and place it
safely in a pocket, wallet or purse

Subjects were then asked to explain how they felt about the
diet and asked whether they intended to make use of the dietary plan.

The Results

Among students who had been instructed to write negative
thoughts about the diet:

Those who had thrown their thoughts away were least critical
of the diet, followed by those who filed their thoughts away at a desk. Those
who had kept their negative thoughts closest - in a pocket, wallet or purse - were
most critical of the diet and least likely to report wanting to try it out at
home.

Among students who had been instructed to write positive
thoughts about the diet:

Those who had thrown away their papers were least impressed
by the diet, followed by those who had filed their papers away at their desks.
Those who had kept their papers closest were most impressed by the diet and
most likely to report wanting to try the diet at home.

The Significance

Writing a thought down and throwing it away reduces its
power while keeping that thought safe and accessible amplifies its influence.

Commentary

According to lead author Richard Petty, "However you tag your
thoughts -- as trash or as worthy of protection -- seems to make a difference
in how you use those thoughts…by physically throwing away or protecting your
thoughts, you influence how you end up using those thoughts. Merely imagining
engaging in these actions has no effect.”

Penn State researchers say you can improve your sense of well-being and life satisfaction by exercising just a little bit harder or for just a little bit longer than you normally do.

Would you invest a few more sweaty minutes of exercise each
day for a pay-off of substantially improved life satisfaction?

Scientists say that you have more control over your
well-being than you probably realize, and that one of the best ways to enhance
your sense of life satisfaction is by exercising for a few extra minutes each
day.

The Experiment

Penn State University researchers recruited 190, 18-25 year
old study subjects to participate in a life satisfaction experiment.

For 8 to 14 days, study subjects answered questions on a
daily basis about life satisfaction at the moment, recent physical activity,
self esteem and other variables.

The Results

After controlling for variables that could influence life
satisfaction, such as depression, anxiety, stress, a high body mass index and fatigue,
the research team found that exercise was significantly correlated to improved life
satisfaction.

Subjects reported feeling greater life satisfaction on days with
more physical activity and feeling less satisfied on more sedentary days.

Subjects reported the largest bump in life satisfaction on
days when they exercised harder or for a few minutes longer than normal.

Commentary

The study authors say governments looking to boost macro-level
mental health need to consider public health polices which encourage physical activity
- and at the individual level, anyone wanting to feel a bit better about life
ought to try sweating it out for a few extra minutes each day.

Researchers say that people who eat more fruits and vegetables, up to a cap at 7 servings per day, are happier and have fewer mental health problems

Eat more fruits and veggies and be happier?

Well, maybe so - researchers at the University of Warwick
and Dartmouth College can’t explain why, but after looking at the dietary
habits of some 80 000 people in the UK they can say that on average, people
that eat more fruits and vegetables are happier individuals.

The Study

The researchers analyzed data from a large sample of study subjects
to see how eating fruits and vegetables affected mental health and
happiness.

For the data, the researchers accessed three cross sectional
health surveys of approximately 80 000 randomly selected citizens of the UK.
Each health survey provided information on dietary habits and on happiness and
well-being factors, such as life satisfaction, mental well-being, presence of
mental disorders, nervousness, low feelings and self reported health and
happiness.

The Results

Even after controlling for confounding variables related to
socioeconomic advantage they found that people get happier as they eat more
fruits and vegetables.

Happiness and well-being increases in a dose dependent manor
as people eat more fruits and vegetables, until it peaks at 7 servings per day
(a single serving = 80 grams of raw fruit or vegetables)

Although many governments recommend 5 portions per day to
reduce cancer and cardiovascular disease risk, in the UK about a quarter
of the population eat 1 or fewer portions of fruit or vegetables per day and
only 10% consumed 7 or more portions per day.

Commentary

The authors call for future research to investigate how and
why eating more vegetables has such a strong influence on well-being, stating, “Human
beings, like all animals, are fueled by the food and liquid they consume. Yet
the literature on well-being has largely ignored the nature of people’s diets….there
seem grounds here for the funding of randomized trials to explore the
consequences for mental health of different levels of fruit-and-vegetable
consumption.”

After sifting through the data from a huge study, English researchers say phone-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) works as well as in person therapy for people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

Fast acting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a proven
effective intervention for people suffering from depression and anxiety.

But though it works well, therapy sessions can be expensive,
people in rural areas may find it hard to find a trained practitioner and
people with mobility impairments may have difficulty traveling to an office for
therapy sessions.

Given these barriers to access, researchers in England
wondered if CBT sessions over the phone might be a reasonable, and cheaper,
alternative to face to face therapy sessions.

The Experiment

To find out, researchers looked at a naturalistic population
sample of over 39 000 people in England who had been referred to get depression
or anxiety treatment. Subjects from this sample pool were assessed and then randomly
assigned to receive either in-person CBT or CBT delivered over the phone.

Before each CBT session, subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire
rating their anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Neither the therapists nor the subjects knew of their participation
in a research study.

The Results

Both phone based CBT and in-person CBT helped subjects
improve their social functioning and decreased their symptoms of anxiety and or
depression.

Although in-person CBT proved more effective for people with
severe symptoms, people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety did equally
well in both treatment groups.

Discussion

Commenting on the implications of their research, the study
authors note, “For most, CBT delivered over-the-telephone is a cost-effective
and probably convenient option...In a global context, the potential is enormous
for spreading access to effective psychological therapies to the millions of
people affected by depression and anxiety. As the availability of mobile phone
technology in low and middle income countries grows, people now have the
potential of having a therapist in their pocket, transcending traditional
barriers to the receipt of effective treatments.”

Researchers say mental outlook has a great influence on overall health. People who believe in fate or luck are more likely to binge drink, overeat and smoke cigarettes while people who believe their choices matter tend to adopt healthier lifestyle habits.

After sifting through data on more than 7000 people who
contributed to the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia
study, researchers in Melbourne think they’ve stumbled upon an important point
about what it takes to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Believe that your actions influence your future and you’re
more likely to live in a way that safeguards that future. Believe more in fate,
chance or destiny and you’re more likely to avoid exercise, smoke cigarettes,
overeat and binge drink.

The researchers also say that men and women seem to have
different motivations for healthier living. While women appreciate the day to
day benefits of a healthier lifestyle, men are more focused on achieving demonstrable
physical results from their lifestyle choices.

Commentary

The researchers conclude that doctors and other professionals
who hope to change a patient’s behavior need to provide more than basic
information, they also need to look at the patient’s personality as a way to understand
the ‘psychological underpinnings’ of poor lifestyle choices.

Sleeping while exposed to low levels of artificial light, like from a TV or computer screen in a darkened room, likely increases your risk of depression, as well as obesity and certain cancers.

Researchers say overnight exposure to low levels of artificial
light – like from a TV or computer monitor in a darkened room – likely increases
your risk for depression.

And even staying up late at the computer or in front of the
TV might elevate your odds of the disorder.

The Study

Researchers at Ohio State University separated a group of
female hamsters into two study groups.

The first group lived in an environment with 16 hours of
full light and 8 hours of darkness

The second group lived with 16 hours of full light and 8
hours of dim light – equivalent to the light emitted from a TV in a darkened
room or the ambient overnight light level of a major city

After 4 weeks, all hamsters were tested for animal measures
of depression:

Appetite for sugar and willingness to swim when placed in
water

Neurochemical measures

The Results

Hamsters exposed to dim overnight lighting had less
appetite for sugar water and were less willing to swim for survival when placed
in water.

The brains of the hamsters exposed to dim light showed evidence
of inflammation (which is strongly associated with depression) a reduction in
the release of melatonin and a reduction in the numbers of dendritic spines in
the hippocampus.

Symptoms of depression in the dim light group were reversed
after 2 weeks of sleeping again in full darkness.

Commentary

The researchers say that rising rates of depression over the
last 50 years may be partly attributable to the huge increase in overnight light exposure over that same period.

But the good news, according to doctoral student and lead
researcher Tracy Bedrosian,is that "people who stay up late in front of the
television and computer may be able to undo some of the harmful effects just by
going back to a regular light-dark cycle and minimizing their exposure to
artificial light at night."

New study shows that telephone based motivational interviewing therapy helps convince people with mental illness to initiate the treatment they need.

Although approximately 52% of US veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan have one or more mental illnesses (such as depression, PTSD or anxiety)
a significant percentage of these vets ignore the mental health treatment they’re
eligible for.

Would motivational interviewing techniques used during brief
phone calls to vets in need result in an increase in treatment participation?

That’s what UCSF professor of psychiatry and medicine Karen
Seal, MD wanted to know, and to find out she enlisted 73 vets with one or more
mental illness to participate in a study.

Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to a group that
received 4 phone calls of motivational interviewing over an 8 week period. The
other half (the control group) got 4 check-in phone calls over that same period,
but no motivational interviewing.

The Results

By the end of the study 62% of the vets from the
motivational interviewing group had initiated mental health treatment compared
to only 26% of the vets from the control group.

Subjects from the motivational interviewing group were far
more likely to stick with treatment than subjects from the control group.

Vets in the motivational interviewing group associated less
stigma with mental health care than vets from the control group

Vets from the motivational interviewing group decreased
their marijuana use more than vets from the control group

Commentary

Explaining the rationale for the study, Seal noted, “The VA
has gone to extraordinary lengths to provide these veterans with
state-of-the-art, evidence-based mental health treatment. The irony is that they
are not necessarily engaging in this treatment. This study was positioned to
try to connect our veterans with the treatments that are available to them.”

She also noted that people who made the phone calls were all
masters’ degree level students who received an 8 hour training course, but because
no professionals were used, the potential replication costs are moderate.

Teens in the Georgia foster care system given 6 weeks of cognitively based compassion training made greater improvements in mental and physical health than teens given no such training.

Researchers at Emory University developed a program called Cognitively
Based Compassion Training (CBCT), which is a secular training course derived
from Tibetan Buddhist teachings on compassion.

The Experiment

Children and teens living in foster care have often experienced
significant trauma and adverse life events. Early life trauma is associated
with increased inflammation and mental illness, as is evidenced by the high
percentage of adolescents in foster care currently using psychiatric medications.

Would adolescents within the Atlanta foster care system
benefit from 6 weeks of compassion training?

To find out, Emory University researchers took a sample of
71 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 from the Atlanta foster care
system and randomly assigned each teen to receive either 6 weeks of CBCT or 6
weeks on a wait list control group.

Prior to and after the 6 weeks of CBCT training or time on a
wait list each subject was tested on measures of hope for the future and
anxiety and each subject provided a saliva sample for the measurement of C-reactive
protein, an indicator of bodily inflammation. Elevated bodily inflammation is
associated with a number of serious diseases, such as depression, cancer,
diabetes, cardiovascular disease and others.

The Results

Teens given CBCT had less anxiety and more hope for the future
after the 6 week program.

6 weeks of CBCT also reduced C-reactive protein levels

Commentary

Lead study author Charles Raison, MD, wrote, "The
beneficial effects of CBCT on anxiety and feelings of hopelessness suggest that
this intervention may provide immediate benefit to foster children. We are even
more encouraged by the finding that CBCT reduced levels of inflammation. Our
hope is that CBCT may help contribute to the long-term health and well being of
foster care children, not only during childhood, but also as they move into
their adult years.”